A two-year-old child explores the world. She finds a special place in the garden where she digs happily in the soft soil. She feels proud of her accomplishments. “Look at me,” she wants to tell the world. “Look at what I can do. I am good.”
“Just look at you!” shouts her mother. “Look at this mess. You are dirty. Your clothes are ruined. I’m very disappointed with you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
The child feels very small. She drops her head and stares at the ground. She sees her dirty hands and clothes and begins to feel dirty inside. She thinks there must be something very bad about her, something so bad she will never really be clean. She hears her mother’s disdain. She feels defective.
* * * * * * * * * *
A young woman, age sixteen, has recently begun dating. Her boyfriend seems to be a gentleman, and, indeed, he never tries to force her to do anything she doesn’t like. She gradually trusts him more and more. They pass romantic notes back and forth during classes.
He affectionately names her “Sexy Girl” in these notes.
One day as she walks through school, her boyfriend’s buddy shouts as she passes: “Hey, Sexy Girl, how you doing?” She suddenly realizes that her boyfriend must have shown their notes to others. She feels instantly humiliated. Her face burns with embarrassment. She wants to run away. She feels that everyone can see right through her.
Later, she gets a call from her boyfriend. He wants to apologize for what happened. But by now she has become furious. “Get away from me!” she cries. “I can never forgive you for what you did. I’ll never talk with you again!”
* * * * * * * * * *
A middle-aged man has a secure job with a small firm. His chances for advancement seem excellent, and he consistently gets positive work reviews from his supervisor. He knows that he is well-regarded by his peers.
One day his boss criticizes this man for a small mistake. Perhaps he was late to a meeting; maybe he forgot to send along an invoice with an order. Very little damage was done. His employer simply calls the problem to this man’s attention without attacking him.
Still, the man feels utterly defeated. He “knows” something is basically wrong with him. He believes he has been exposed as a fraud. He is certain that others will recognize that he should not even be allowed to work there anymore. He is not perfect, so he must be worthless. He spends hours remembering every mistake he has ever made at this and previous jobs, which only makes him feel worse. He retreats to his office, closes the door, and hides there the rest of the day. He knows he will never be good enough.
* * * * * * * * * *
An older man spends much of his time criticizing everybody around him. His wife is stupid; his son is lazy; his daughter is foolish; his friends are crude; the world is rotten. He does not hesitate to tell others that he is smarter, more sensible, and just generally better than they. He advertises his sense of superiority. He expects to be honored.
Perhaps a few people buy his image. But others recognize that this man is wearing a mask. They see through his pomposity and arrogance to the insecure and flawed person inside. They realize that this man tries to convince the world that he is better than others, when he really feels he is worse. Still, living around this man is quite difficult, since he is so contemptuous of others. Rather than honoring or worshipping him, they pull away, avoiding him and hesitating to tell him anything about themselves.
* * * * * * * * * *
The four persons in these examples have one thing in common — the feeling of shame. Shame is a painful feeling that can be felt throughout your body. It has many variations and never looks exactly alike in any two individuals. The little girl’s shame, for example, is much more physical and less intellectual than the older man’s. The teenage girl’s immediate sense of exposure and humiliation contrasts with the businessman’s long-term doubts. The older man hides his shame from himself more than from others, while the businessman has kept his shame a complete secret. Only the teenage girl in these examples converted her shame into rage.
The shame experience does have common features: definite and strong physical responses, uncomfortable thoughts, troublesome behaviors, and spiritual agony.
The sudden feeling of strong shame is an overpowering experience. One moment earlier we seemed fine, full of energy, self-worth, and joy. Then something bad happens, perhaps something as trivial as noticing a stain on our shirt or blouse, perhaps something more obvious like our boss yelling at us about a mistake. These are times when we would like to stay cool and composed. We would love to be able to respond to these situations with dignity, grace, and poise.
If only our bodies would cooperate. Instead, we feel our faces getting warm. For some reason, we cannot force our eyes to look forward, because they insist on following as our head bends toward the ground. Maybe our chest becomes heavy. Our heart might pound as we sense that, right now, we are not in control of our body. Some of us may feel an empty sensation in our gut. Time may seem to crawl as we writhe in the grip of acute self-consciousness. We can barely talk. We are ashamed.
It’s bad enough to feel this first round of shame. But once we notice these sensations, we may begin to feel even worse. We become ashamed of our shame. We may desperately try to tell ourselves to calm down, but our bodies still refuse to listen. Warmth turns into heat, and we blush with embarrassment. Now our eyes are driven down, and we have to fight a compelling urge to retreat, to turn our backs on the entire situation. We may start to feel nauseated. We are becoming sick with our shame.
Not all shame attacks are this painful. But shame is almost always a physical event. Its more subtle forms include brief hesitations in speech, glancing away while talking, delicate shifts of conversation, and barely noticeable feelings of facial warmth and discomfort. Shame is, above all, a feeling.
Two other physical responses are common during a shame attack. First, we start to feel smaller and smaller. Second, the persons around us seem to get bigger, louder, and more dangerous. It is as if we were shrinking. What may be happening is that we have pulled inward, instinctively taking up less room by contracting our arms and legs. We are trying to protect ourselves by making ourselves feel small. People who experience this report that they feel like young children when they feel shame.
Shamed people feel open, vulnerable, and exposed to others despite this effort to shrink down. This is more than a thought — it is a bodily response that can be very uncomfortable. Another person’s look seems to almost touch them. Skin seems to become transparent so that others can see right through them. The shamed person would dearly like to become completely invisible. Instead, this person feels totally open for inspection.
But shame is more than a feeling. Disconcerting feelings trigger painful thoughts, usually all too familiar thoughts that increase the shamed person’s troubles. These thoughts confirm the shamed person’s feeling of having something to feel ashamed about.
Shame produces such powerful feelings that it is easy to underestimate the importance of our thoughts in recording, labeling, and even increasing that emotion. Scholars often write that shame is much more physical than guilt — that guilt occurs in our heads, while shame occurs in our bodies. There is some truth to this argument. Shamed people usually feel so bad that they do not want to dwell on the experience. They want to get rid of these feelings as soon as possible. Who would want to think about their shame?
And yet, shame is also very much a mental process. We do think about shame, and sometimes we cannot stop thinking about our embarrassments, defeats, and humiliations. We end up calling ourselves terrible names (“Dummy,” “Idiot,” “Bitch,” et cetera) that add to our shame. Self-hatred develops in this manner, one insult at a time.
Here are thoughts that shamed people commonly tell themselves:
Persons who are deeply shamed have these thoughts with great regularity. In fact, they often assume that almost everybody thinks this way — that most people view themselves as fundamentally bad, flawed, and shameful. They are also pretty sure that others agree with their self-evaluation. They believe their family and associates see them as defective too. People who are deeply shamed expect ridicule and disdain from everyone because they believe they deserve condemnation. If, by chance, they receive praise instead of criticism, they are likely to reject both the praise (If only they knew how badly I’ve really done on this job) and the praiser (She is just making fun of me by pretending to like what I do).
These negative thoughts compound shame. They tell the people who have them that they have been shamed, should be shamed, can’t escape the shame, and will always be ashamed. They tell the shamed people that they are different from others.
What actions does the shamed person take to get rid of shame? How can the suffering be alleviated? We’ll discuss negative responses to shame here. Positive responses — what can be done to turn shame into power — will be discussed in Section Three. Responses to shame a person may have include paralysis, faltering energy, escapism, withdrawal, perfectionism, criticism, and rage. We will discuss each of these here.
Paralysis. The shamed person may be paralyzed, unable to do anything. The person may want to speak back to an accuser, but no words come to mind. He may want to run away, but he cannot mobilize enough energy to do so. He is stuck. His paralysis intensifies his shame, because now he can attack himself for not being strong enough to stand up for himself.
Faltering energy. Shame steals energy just as it diminishes self—worth. Most people slowly crumble in the face of a shaming attack. They feel smaller, weaker, less potent. They are diminished.
Escapism. The shamed person usually wants badly to escape. She feels overwhelmed in the current social situation. Like the businessman and the adolescent girl in the examples, most shamed persons will attempt to withdraw from others. They seek out private, secure places — places where nobody can see them in their shame. Deeply shamed people may become very private people who prefer to spend their time alone.
Withdrawal. This can be more subtle than simply running away. Sometimes, people develop elaborate masks to cover their real selves. They smile a lot, always try to please others, and appear self-confident and comfortable. Convinced that others would despise them if they could see past their masks to their real selves, people who are shamed try to keep their shame a secret. They withdraw emotionally.
Perfectionism. The shamed person may also reason that she will have nothing to feel ashamed about if she never makes a mistake. She then becomes a perfectionist. But she is caught in the trap of being human. Human beings make mistakes, but to her any error advertises her shame. She cannot afford to be human. She cannot afford to fall short in anything she does.
Criticism. Shamed people often become highly critical of everyone else. They seem eager to point out the weaknesses of those around them, just like the older man did in the chapter-opening example. This behavior is like the magician who suddenly pulls his coin from behind the ear of a member of the audience.
“Abracadabra!” he says. “What was mine is now yours.”
“Abracadabra!” says the perpetual critic. “I give my shame to you.” Not only does the critic rid herself of these bad feelings, she can also actually believe that she is better than anyone else. She may need to feel superior to avoid being submerged in inferiority feelings.
Rage. This is another response to shame. One way to fight against humiliation is to attack the supposed attacker. The rageful person may become furious with another, sometimes over the slightest affront to his dignity. For example, he may rail against the host who forgets his name, the spouse who says hello to an old high school acquaintance, “authorities” just because they have power, and his children for wanting attention. Those who combine shame with rage may become verbally or physically abusive. By attacking the personalities of others, they defend their own fragile identities.
Shame involves a failure of the total being. The person who is shamed believes that she should not exist. It is not that she has done something wrong (that is guilt). The shamed person believes that she is something wrong. She is a shame, not just ashamed.
The shamed person encounters a spiritual crisis at his very core. Does he have any right even to exist? Is he some dreadful mistake that nobody would claim? Would even God forsake him? Is he unworthy of love? When shame is strongest, many people would answer yes to each of these questions.
Shame temporarily deprives us of our humanness. We begin to think of ourselves as subhuman, less than fully alive. We lose the sense of communion with others. We lose our connections with a Higher Power, so that we become isolated from all external sources of comfort. We can feel a tremendous loneliness at the center of our being.
The shamed person feels worthless: worth less than everyone around her, worth nothing. She sees herself as a debit to others, a problem in their lives. She may hope that others will tolerate her, but she sees no possibility that they would want to embrace her. During moments of strong shame, she can think of nothing about herself that is worthwhile. She may consider suicide.
A feeling of emptiness accompanies feelings of worthless-ness. The shamed person often feels hollowed out. He seems to be a “nothing.” He has no identity of his own. He wears a mask both to cover his shame and to hide his emptiness. He has lost his soul to his shame.
Shamed persons sometimes appear to be quite arrogant. They act as if they were badly overinflated balloons, so swollen with pride that they float above the earth. But no amount of ego-inflation can undo the damage from shame. These persons are still empty inside. They can attempt to conceal the sense of nothingness that comes with deep shame, but it remains until it can be addressed honestly.
Shame has many components. It is first a painful feeling that involves the face, the entire body. Uncomfortable thoughts precede, accompany, and follow these physical feelings. A shamed individual may be too paralyzed to act. If she can, she will usually withdraw from others either physically or emotionally. A shamed person also suffers a spiritual crisis in which she feels less than human and cut off from others as well as her Higher Power.
Compare your experiences of shame to those of the four people in the descriptions at the beginning of the chapter. Write your answers on a separate sheet of paper.
Take a minute to examine the physical sensations you connect to shame. Remember a time when you felt smaller than life, or when you felt looked at, looked through, or exposed. Allow yourself to remember some of the feelings you had then. Where did your eyes look? What did your hands do? How did your face feel? Your stomach? Were you warm or cool? Now take three deep breaths, in and out, and as you exhale each breath let these feelings drain down out of you and into the floor. Describe what you feel.
When you feel shame, how does it affect your self-esteem? Take note of each statement that is similar to thoughts or ideas you experience when you feel ashamed.
Each of these statements makes it harder to feel that you fit into and play a useful part in the world.
Now write three things that are good about you. List those things you know are good about you, or things other people, who can see you more objectively, tell you are good about yourself. Remember, feelings of shame create painful ideas and attitudes about ourselves THAT ARE OFTEN NOT TRUE.